Secession, Austria's preeminent artist-run kunsthalle, is showing the film series Meteoro (2023-ongoing) by Ana Vaz. In her work, Vaz takes a critical approach to how violence and repression leave scars upon the landscape and the impact that the continued colonization of the earth has on the unfolding ecological ruin. Through the poetic interplay of collaged images and sound, Vaz undermines the overarching narrative of Western modernity and documents the detrimental aftermath that it leaves across the vast expanses of this planet.

In this latest film poem by the Brazilian artist, Vaz hones in on two European cities – Paris and Porto – portraying them as being on the brink of imminent collapse or on the path to obsolescence. The tale of these two cities unfolds on twin screens, where Vaz contrasts contradictory images from their pasts and their presents, with animals, minerals, organic materials and artificial constructions racing past in quick succession. Rendered in black and white images, Meteoro uncovers the disastrous imprint left by an Empire founded upon colonial violence, displacement and excessive consumption.

Ana Vaz, Meteoro , 2023. View of the exhibition Do You Believe in Ghosts? at the Pernod Ricard Foundation. © Aurélien Mole.

Vaz has divided her film poem into three chapters, wherein she posits a “counter-ethnography” in which the landmarks and infrastructures of these two cities are reflected and refracted. The film was developed in collaboration with Tuareg researcher Maïa Tellit Hawad, Franco-Guadeloupean author Olivier Marboeuf, and Portuguese artist Isabel Carvalho, each of whom worked on a chapter. Hawad incorporates the apocalyptic poetry of her father, describing the impact of mining on Tuareg lands, and interweaves it with the accounts of Parisians, creating a hallucinatory sojourn through a city gripped by chaos.

In the other two chapters, the act of looking is superseded by an intensely corporeal experience, hinting at a break from the “tyranny” of the abstract gaze and a shift towards the concreteness of the camera's instantiation in the spatio-temporal dimension. The artistic techniques that Vaz applies in her work reveal her conviction in the power of film to “decolonize the mind.”

Meteoro at Vienna Secession opens on March 8 and runs until May 18, 2025. For more information on this exhibition and other events at Vienna Secession, visit their site.

The link has been copied!